Hail to the Thief
by InterstellarSandwich
Summary: Imagine one of the worst possible things that could happen while you're visiting loving family on your mother's side. If you imagine being caught masturbating, you're in for a treat. Because this has nothing to do with that. It's way worse. Orig. Horror


**AN:** _This is a result of a dream I had, if any likenesses in this content show up it is completely coincidental. No need to get butthurt, folks._

"Honey, are you okay unloading your bags on your own? Greg isn't here and my back has been killing me lately," My aunt Lydia was climbing out of the driver's side of a tall, black Suburban. This was a little amusing, seeing as how she was one of the tiniest women I've ever known personally- rail thin, small chest, and short with tiny hands. She landed outside on her feet with a crunch, the white gravel wet underneath her size 5 Nike sneakers.

"That's fine!" I assured her politely. I still wasn't used to her company, or her family's and I didn't feel comfortable enough to be anything but sickeningly polite. Sugar sweet, that was me. I looked up at the house and was surprised at the actual size of it compared to the vision I had of a small to medium ranch style house. The actual thing was an old brute of a house. It was kind of imposing, really. But I understood why it might have been affordable, the outside was atrocious looking.

I went around to open the back of the Suburban, pulling out all the bags I could carry at once. This ended up being two bags, but I never was one to call myself a bodybuilder without a few drinks in me and a hot chick to impress. I wandered my way up onto the rickety old porch. The wall beside the door was covered in ivy, and there was a ladybug perched on one of the leaves. I know this, only because there was a long awkward pause after I realized I was going to have trouble opening the door. I stared at that ladybug like its omniscient overlord until I heard a rattle on the other side of the door.

I was greeted- well, more like stared at ominously, by a small, chubby little boy chomping one of those tube-Popsicle things. He was probably about five, but don't quote me on it, since all little kids are the same age to me. I faked a great big goofy smile at him and bent over to his level.

"Hi there!" I said in a cheery voice, "I'm your cousin, Ryan. I don't know if you remember me, but-" I was cut off mid-sentence by the juice stuff or whatever the hell it is the Popsicles are before they're frozen spraying me in the face.

"Don't talk to me like I'm five!" He demanded, angrily. He slammed the door on me and my face sank into a grimace. I was about to ring the doorbell, when the door was swung open again. This time it was a female. She was probably five. I was about to smile my reserved "kid smile" when I noticed the small puffs on her chest that I could assume were either terrible bee stings, or the beginning of breasts.

"I'm sorry about Benny, he's been a little jerk to everyone lately," she said. "Remember me? It's Penny!" Before I remembered her like she wanted I had a very brief moment to mull over the confusion that saying their names would cause. But who would have the foresight to think Penelope would get confused with the name Benjamin? I digress...

Then after a short spurt of whatever is wrong with my brain, I remembered. The last time I had seen anyone, Penny was literally only five. The fat little kid wasn't even three yet. There was Amber, Penny, Benny, and Daniel. Daniel was maybe six months older than me, and had already turned 18 by now. The last time I visited, we were constantly playing. I stayed with him in his room and we spent all night telling stupid stories to make the other laugh. I wondered if he was still around.

Penny looked at me inquisitively. "Are... you coming inside?"

"Oh! Yeah," I said, and I sidled myself awkwardly through the door. I probably looked like a penguin. I set my bags down in the landing and looked around. I was slowly recollecting how much of a labyrinth of a house it actually was. I'm pretty sure I peed myself looking for their bathroom once. I wasn't about to let that happen again. Oh no- _You fool me once_...

I was dragged mercilessly away from my thoughts by a loud clamor coming from upstairs. There was a loud rhythmic pounding that was getting louder and louder. I stood there utterly confused until I looked at Penny, who had shame written all over her face. Someone was fucking, and for broship's sake, I hoped it was Daniel.

I don't know how long I stood there just taking in the scenery, with all its smells and suggestive background noises. But eventually the sound stopped and a couple was filing down the steps. The guy in front had to be Daniel. He had one of those mellow expressions one could really only associate with someone who had, well- just got laid.

"Ryan?" He called to me, a smile spreading across his face. "Dude, I haven't seen you in forever. Mom told me about the whole situation you got back at home, no wonder you decided to chill here." He held out a hand, and I instinctively slapped it. I immediately regretted this, however, when I recalled what he had just been doing not moments before.

His face still looked the same, except older. He had a kind of casual scruffiness going on with his facial hair. The hair on his head was long, thick, and wavy. He looked at me with excited bright blue eyes. I looked past him to see a really cute looking girl putting her earrings back on. She smiled an awkward, more or less annoyed smile, as if she shouldn't be bothered.

"Ryan, this is my lady- her name is Erica," He said with a weird sort of pride in his voice. "Babe, this is my cousin Ryan." He said to Erica. She nodded and stayed quiet while she fixed her hair.

Erica, she looked kind of like Lindsay Lohan. Not in-and-out-of-court Drunky McRehab Lindsay, but pretty and blonde movie Lindsay. Also, not large boobs Lindsay, but somewhere around a B or a C cup Lindsay. Nevertheless, I was equal parts proud and jealous of Daniel.

"Listen, Ryan," he said, patting Penny on the head. "Erica and I were going to go to a friend's house and smoke some bud, are you interested in joining us?"

"Naw, I still have to get settled in, yet," I replied. I was already tired from spending so much time riding over. I picked up my bags again. Daniel smiled understandingly and gave me a nod.

"Gotchya," he said. He gestured for Erica to go ahead past him, to which she obliged. "Hey, I'll see you in a few okay?" He patted me on the shoulder and headed out.

Penny sighed. "He should spend more time here while you're around."

"That's fine," I reassured her. "A couple hours away won't hurt anybody."

Penny looked at me like I was an idiot and grabbed one of my bags in assistance, though haphazardly. "He usually stays out for days at a time. That was him 'coming by to see you.'"

Day four, after all the initial settling in had passed, I was caught up on their regular family shit. Benny was not actually five, but ten, _ooh my bad. _He was in soccer, on the honor roll, but had anger problems lately. Amber was fifteen, and was "starting to notice boys, tee-hee!", according to Aunt Lydia. Penny was thirteen, and has a mindset that she's going to be a famous actress. I would often catch her prancing around dramatically, sometimes singing to herself in a weird sort of operatic voice.

Daniel, in contrast to the rest of his family, was spoken of in hushed tones by everyone else. I didn't see him as directly being a bad person, but they had their own thoughts on that.

_"He doesn't ever come home, it makes us crazy," Aunt Lydia had said. "And when he does, it's with some new little hussy. We're going to find him in a gutter somewhere, I swear we will. It's not right to make a parent bury their child, but that boy'll find a way."_

"Hey Butthead," Benny called out to me. "Help me set up the picnic table!"

"Okay Turdglob," I replied. I grabbed a package of napkins off the counter and followed him outside. Lydia wanted to have a meal outside for some reason today, something about it being "really nice out, blah blah blah". Greg, her husband, was grilling. I set the napkins on the center of the table.

Suddenly, I felt an unmistakable urge hit me. I had to piss. _Upstairs, down the hall three doors, and on the right. It's my time to shine. _I walked inside and walked upstairs, past all the family photos lining the walls. I continued down the hall to my left, and counted. One, two, three- _wait what_? The bathroom wasn't there. I was struck with a sad, sad terror.

Then I realized I was looking on the left side of the hall. I redirected my gaze to the right side of the hall, and beheld my salvation. I could see the porcelain beauty waiting for me through the crack of the door. I sighed in happy relief and opened the door. What I found inside surprised me.

Lindsay Lohan was in the bathtub. The pretty, blonde, movie Lindsay- if she were covered in a mixture of water, corn syrup, red food coloring, and maple syrup. "Erica?" I asked, my voice quivering a little. She replied with something of a wet gurgle. I watched a spurt of blood splatter against her face as she coughed. I watched it drip off her chin, and drop onto her naked chest. I heard myself say, "hold on one second, don't go anywhere, I'll get help."

_Don't go anywhere._

I ran back the way I came, thinking in quick bursts. Who could have done this? How did she get in the house? What the fuck? I ran out and pulled on Greg's t-shirt, yelling incoherently.

"Calm down, calm down," he said, trying to reassure me. "What's the problem? Talk slowly, Ryan."

"Lindsay- I mean, fuck! I mean, Erica, she-"

"Who?"

"Erica!" I yelled, clearly frustrated.

"Who's Erica?"

"Oh fuck! Follow me!"

Although I raced through the house, dragging this man around every corner with all the strength my adrenaline could offer, it felt like an hour until we reached the bathroom. I practically broke down the door. Greg looked as though he was about to reprimand me for it, but I watched his face twist from disapproval to a gut wrenching horror.

He knelt over the bathtub. "Miss? Are you alright?" I figured this was some sort of backwards rhetorical question, but he continued to ask her panicked questions as though we had all the time in the world. "Listen, I can go get help- please, tell me your name."

Erica twisted her head to the side to look him in the eye. I heard snapping and wet sucking noises as she did so, sending my stomach into knots. I thought I was going to be sick. She sputtered a little more blood out of the corner of her mouth, her face was sticky with it. She was so pale and still, and her eyes were glossing over. She said in a voice that sounded like it was completely caked in phlegm, "Don't you recognize me, dad? It's Dan,"

I could tell we were both taken aback by this. She had uttered her words so simply, as if they were genuine. Of course, this wasn't Daniel. Greg asked in a tone sounding more concerned than ever, "Are you a friend of Daniel's?"

She lay there motionless for a while, staring him dead in the eyes. Just as my uncle went to open his mouth to, what I could only assume was repeat the question, Erica reacted. She twisted her neck haphazardly from side to side. As she lolled her head about violently, her neck re-emitted the wet popping sounds. She was oozing blood now, twisting and arching her back, back and forth.

Greg turned to me, fear in his eyes. "Go call for help!" He screamed. But I just couldn't move, because what I was observing from behind him was the most fucked up thing I'd ever seen. I watched Erica's spine take on a movement of its own, twitching and popping out from its place. She was smiling now, her teeth coated in red- her eyes shifting in different directions. She was panting quickly, her labored breaths turning into low guttural sounds.

Greg followed my gaze back over to her and stood up, shocked.

"Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad?"

Her voice got louder and louder- eventually taking on a more masculine tone. She sounded exactly like Daniel. The popping noises continued. Erica's eyes were bulging out of her skull. Her head was reared back, and yet- she was looking straight at me. I felt my own stomach surge, a familiar but sudden sickness washed over me. I felt my own lunch, warm and gooey from being inside my gut, climb its way up my throat and onto the floor.

And as if it needed to get weirder, when I looked up I saw Greg frozen there. I saw Erica thrash her head from side to side some more. And then- she reared her head and back one last time, and _ripped the fuck in half. _I felt little wet hunks of flesh slap me in the face, individually- one even landed on my lip. Too shocked to even react, however, I watched the jagged, bloody edges of flesh pulse and wriggle. There were arteries and veins just gushing down the crack of raw meat that used to be Lindsay Lohan's smaller rack.

I was expecting that to be the end of it. I didn't know what spontaneous combustion was supposed to look like, but maybe it looked like that. I just stared and stared at it, for what felt like years. I thought, _Well, that was probably the strangest thing I'll ever get to see. _I thought, _maybe I'll join the military._ And then, it happened.

A wolf- which looked to be composed primarily of dead, cracked skin, nudged its way out of Erica's body. At this point, my brain wasn't even processing the situation. I literally thought about how badly I needed new tennis shoes.

The creature looked like it was glowing internally. Each crack in its skin emitted a faint blue glow. It had the occasional patch of dark fur here and there, but it mostly looked disgusting. Its eyes looked like they were just bright blue lights on its face, and its teeth were sharp and scraggly. It looked directly at Greg and said in a perfect Daniel voice, "Dad? It's me, dad."

I was looking around wildly now, on the premise that I could find something to kill it. _I could Hulk out, and rip the towel rack off the wall and use it as a blunt weapon-_ something caught my eye.

It was a flicker of light through the door in the towel pantry. The harder I looked, the more it totally looked like someone was looking through the door at me. I looked back over to the crinkly flesh wolf who lives inside of celebrities. It was shaking off Erica's skin, making a low growling sound that I could feel in my chest- like if someone turned up the bass. It repeated, "Dad?"

Greg finally reacted. This reaction was pushing me into the doorway as he ran out of the room past me.

_Awesome._

"Dad? _You're so selfish, dad..._" The wolf's "Daniel" voice turned into a garbled, demonic auto-tune. It leaped completely out of the bathtub- a glowy, crusty, muscular beast composed of the stuff nightmares are made of. I just sat there at the base of the door, weak from horror. I took this as my first moment to realize that my heart was fighting viciously against my sternum. I was going to die.

To my surprise, the flesh-wolf jumped over me and ran deeper into the house to chase after my uncle. On the bright side, I didn't have to go to the bathroom anymore. I stood, legs shaking and heart about to give out on me. I had a looming curiosity as I wandered in the bathroom, past Lindsay Lohan's carcass. I took a terrifying note that her body was missing its organs- hollowed out. I wondered how long she had been like this.

I made my way to the towel pantry and creaked open the door a little wider. Daniel was staring right at me, fear in his eyes- and he was dead.


End file.
